Philadelphia

City of Brotherly Love. Love Park

Philadelphia. We really miss it. We had so much fun there and my parents and siblings did everything for us. They adored our children and treated them like priceless gold. We were no doubt pampered and because of that I believe we're still in vacation mode. We expect someone to do our dishes and clean up and take care of the kids in the morning so we can sleep in. Where is my mother?!!! No, really. We really had such a great time in Philadelphia this last trip. We made it so that our vacation was 10 days long rather than 4-5 days like we did before, which gave us no time to explore Philadelphia. But this last time we had 2 weekends and the labor day holiday and Rosh Hashanah (My little Bro got 2 days off for this) to spend with the family and while they were at work and in school we did many things. We saw lots of places including outdoor sites, museums, historical sites, and eating fresh crabs, cheese steaks and tastycakes.

At the branch's Labor Day picnic at FDR park
The picnic was great. The food was phenomenal. My mother made the most amazing eggrolls, the skills of which she did pass on to me thankfully. The weather was a beautiful 80 degrees. It was a beautiful day.
My daddy diving for the ball. Still a healthy man.


Brie modeled for 2 Temple students as seen in the picture below. They wanted to have Reena do it but she was a little shy so Brie took the part. She was a super friendly baby on our trip. She waved her cute little wave and said hi and bye to people as they passed by.
My parents brought 2 hammocks out to the park and the kids loved it. One fell asleep here with my mother.

The Game Park

We took a visit to City Hall and saw many neat sculptures. Brie was a daredevil and wanted to just jump down. Scary that her little body could go through that.
This hall's columns have unique sculpted statues of the 4 major races in the world.
Carpenter's Hall

My sister Thuyen had a birthday while we were there. Doesn't happen too often so we made it special. We took the party out to the boat and had wonderful views from the Delaware river to celebrate it.


We took a little night walk around UPENN. It is a beautiful campus. Each of their buildings is built with such beautiful Collegiate Gothic architectural style. They also had art sculptures like some of these.




Independence Hall. It was so neat to revisit the places where our forefathers stood and lived and fought for this country. We took some time to ponder the uniqueness of this place.

Natural Academy of the Sciences



Franklin Institute was so much fun. We spent 3 hours here and still didn't have enough time to explore everything. The entrance was most amazing to me. The architectural details could only be captured through video not photo imaging.

About to make some real paper. Doesn't the guy look like Einstein?!


Museum of Art
Rocky!

My best friend from 7th grade happened to be home the day from college so we arranged to meet and hung out before I left.

Other fun things we did were hanging out with my family and eating the great food my parents cook. Food is a very big thing in the Viet culture and every meal we had was a big feast. It was so great to be pampered.
Dan did the vanity and I cooked for my parents. I made chicken cordon bleu and my mother thought that was the best American food she had ever had, except it's French. See more great recipes on my site thatkreativekorner.blogspot.com.

My cute parents spent so much time cooking for us. I love these authentic Viet food wrapped in banana leaves. Somehow I can smell the tropical freshness in the taste of the food. I don't make these so they were a treat!
Our photographer for the trip. Isn't she so cute?!!!!

More pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309300&id=747639656&l=51